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| Courtesy of MGM |
Based on the a series
of stories known as Tevye (or Tevye the Dairyman) and his Daughters by Yiddish
author Sholem Aleichem adapted by playwright Joseph Stein with music and lyrics
by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, the period musical concerns early 20th
century Imperial Russia and centers on impoverished but happy Yiddish milkman
Tevye, a staunchly traditional man struggling with the difficulties of raising
his daughters who are caught up in their own romances and potential marriages,
all the while the Russian government begins expelling the Russian-Jewish
residents from their homes.
All the while Tevye following tradition in its footsteps tries to
arrange for his oldest daughter Tzeitel (Rosalind Harris) to marry a crusty but
well-to-do elder named Lazer Wolf (bearded Paul Mann) against her wishes, not
knowing her heart lies with the poor tailor Motel Kamzoil (Leonard Frey). All the while his daughters are sorting out
their marital wishes with their traditional father, Tsarist troops are preparing
a pogrom that threatens the lives of the happy villagers.
A stage theater favorite commandeered for years by The Producers
actor Zero Mostel in a role that initially controversially but ultimately
for the film’s benefit went to the late Israeli actor Chaim Topol, Fiddler
on the Roof as Norman Jewison’s first musical is a star-studded widescreen
epic that became the biggest box office moneymaker of 1971. As with Jewison’s later American-Italian
romantic comedy Moonstruck, the musical is entrenched in culture,
small-talk, interpersonal banter, distinctive cultural traditions and a
splendid mixture of comedy and drama.
Much of the film’s power lies on the shoulders of Topol who makes Tevye
from a caricature into a full-blooded living breathing person onscreen who is
instantly unforgettable the moment he first begins speaking his lines. Highly funny when it doesn’t dip into heavy
historical dramatic fiction, Fiddler on the Roof is an ornate in-depth
look at the lives of simple people trying to find love in a way that threatens
to break traditions.
Shot on location in Yugoslavia and Croatia with interior
scenes shot in Pinewood Studios in Panavision by Oliver! Cinematographer
Oswald Harris, the film’s breathtaking look of natural locations and interior
set pieces transports you the viewer back into another place and time long
since lost to age. The play itself is
rendered and conducted for the film by none other than Star Wars composer
John Williams who makes Jerry Bock’s music sound epic and sweeping on the
screen.
The cast including then-late
actress Norma Crane as Tevye’s wife Golde is splendid with the 50-year-old Tevye
played by a then-only 35-year-old Topol is splendid across the board. Special attention also goes to a very young
Paul Michael Glaser who would go on to both play Starsky in Starsky and Hutch
but would later direct Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Running Man.
Released theatrically in 1971, the film became a major hit
and garnered several Academy Award nominations as winning three for Best
Cinematography, Best Music and Best Sound.
As an American film dramatizing a pivotal moment in Russian history, the
film joins David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago and Ken Russell’s The Music
Lovers as a snapshot of life in the country at a time when drastic changes
and tragedies were befalling the country.
Considered by many to be among the most powerfully emotional musical
films ever made with believably authentic characters painting a portrait of a
way of life long since bygone, the film helped cement Norman Jewison’s
reputation as one of the best film directors of the 1970s and Israeli actor Chaim
Topol as one of the silver screen’s most colorful performers. Seen now it remains as timelessly charming,
intimate and profoundly moving as it was when it first appeared before
audiences fifty years ago, a film about some of the magnificence found in life’s
simplest and sometimes most meager offerings.
--Andrew Kotwicki
